LAWRENCE — “Heating Up: Artists Respond to Climate Change”is an art exhibit and month-long series of cultural and educational events scheduled for March and April in Lawrence, Kansas. The project brings together dozens of local and regional artists, poets, educators and performers working on climate change. A panel discussion in April includes a combination of nationally active and prominent local voices.

The exhibit “Heating up: Artists Respond to Climate Change,” opens on Final Friday, March 25, 2016, 5 – 10pm, at the Lawrence Percolator located in the alley east of New Hampshire St. between 9th St. and 10th St., behind the Lawrence Arts Center. The opening will feature three brief performances. At 7 and 9 pm, Robert Baker will read poetry by Langston Hughes and the band Ovaries-eez will perform. At 8 pm, local poets Dennis Etzel, Sandy Hazlett, Denise Low, Topher Enneking, Nancy Hubble, and Mary Wharff will read from their poetry, and Doug Hitt will briefly speak about his co-authored book A Kansas Bestiary.The exhibit runs March 25 – April 23 and is open Saturdays and Sundays, noon – 5pm.

“We hope that the exhibit bolsters a community conversation about climate change and what we can do about it,” said committee co-chair Lora Jost.

The exhibit includes the work of 42 local and regional artists with diverse viewpoints, some working in teams. The exhibit includes art by professionals and non-professionals, among them professors and students alike.

“We wanted to exhibit the work of artists who are already working on climate change as well as to activate others to engage climate change as a new theme in their work,” said committee co-chair Sara Taliaferro.

Art in the exhibit includes paintings, prints, drawings, an artist book, sculptures, and installations. Some of the art pieces concern the roots of climate change and the effects of fossil fuel consumption on the weather, animals, and people. Some of the art pieces convey deep despair. One artist’s work is a metaphor for creativity born from crisis. Additional art pieces offer hope, visualizing ways to work together toward solutions.

Justin Marable’s prints, for example, with images of coal smoke, dinosaur bones, birds and buffalo, illustrate how fossil fuel use and consumerism affect the earth and animals. Damia Smith’s colorful, intricate, enameled copper images reveal how burning coal in the United States brings drought and famine to north Africa. A painting by Haskell Indian Nations University student Geraldine Walsey shows a woman looking to the past through winged eyes, “searching for the beauty of what nature once was, and now is rarely seen today.”

Laura Ramberg’s ceramic cloud vessels evoke sharing food and other resources as a way to reduce the need and greed arising from our reliance on fossil fuels. A team of artists (KU Professor Matthew Burke and then students Samuel Balbuena, Cameron Pratte, Vi Stenzel, and Cortney Wise) contributed a functional beehive that, once launched, offers a home for the dwindling honeybee population. Marin Abell’s whimsical 9-foot long flat-bottomed trolling motorboat, complete with serpent heads, is made with Eurasian Milfoil (an invasive aquatic plant that threatens lakes) and runs on distilled Milfoil ethanol.

Jill Ensley’s interactive board game playfully asks serious questions about our future: “Will the last iceberg melt? Will the pollinators die off? Will you opt to take in those climate refugees? Do you believe we can step back from the edge, or that it’s too late?”

The exhibit and related events are sponsored by two Lawrence community groups, the USDAC-Lawrence Field Office and Lawrence Ecology Teams United in Sustainability (LETUS), in collaboration with Haskell Indian Nations University (HINU) and the Lawrence Percolator. (See USDAC-Lawrence Field Office at http://on.fb.me/20riNAM, the USDAC national office at http://www.usdac.us, and LETUS at https://lawrenceecologyteams.wordpress.com/about/.)

“How Can We Work Together on Climate Change?” is a panel discussion that is free and open to the public on Sunday April 10, 3-5pm, Parker Hall, Room 110, at Haskell Indian Nations University. The event includes five prestigious panelists, all local, with an exciting combination of experiences and expertise on climate change, arts and culture, community organizing, and practical steps to a sustainable future. Panelists include Saralyn Reece Hardy, Director of the Spencer Museum of Art; Thad Holcombe, retired Ecumenical Christian Ministries Campus Minister at KU and Moderator for Lawrence Ecology Teams United in Sustainability; Eileen Horn, Sustainability Coordinator for Douglas County and the City of Lawrence and formerly with the Climate and Energy Project and Interfaith Power and Light; Jay T. Johnson, Associate Professor and Associate Chair of Geography and Atmospheric Science at KU and directs KU’s Center for Indigenous Research, Science, and Technology; Dan Wildcat, professor at Haskell Indian Nations University, Director of the Haskell Environmental Research Studies Center, and Convener of the American Indian/Alaska Native Climate Change Working Group. The panel will be facilitated by Sara Taliaferro with music by Alex Williams and art by Haskell students. The panel discussion is listed as a Facebook event: http://on.fb.me/1L6z6l8

“Mrs. Noah in Poetry and Dance” is a collaborative performance by poet Elizabeth Schultz and dancer Joan Stone, on Friday April 15, 2016, at the Lawrence Percolator, with performances at 7 and 9pm. The collaboration includes Stone’s insightful dance interpretations of Schultz’s poems that reflect on the relationships among humans and animals, examining how catastrophes disturb these relationships, how the resulting tremors connect us, and how we survive together, learning from one another. Elizabeth Schultz, retired from KU’s English Department, has published a large body of scholarly writings, books of poetry, short stories, essays, and a memoir, and is a dedicated advocate for the arts and the environment. Joan Stone taught dance history and choreography at the University of Kansas from 1982 to 2010, and through dance explores nature, dance and politics, women as history makers, and the relationship between gesture and word. The performance is listed as a Facebook event: http://on.fb.me/1njVj3i

“A Change in the Weather: Writing From Climate Change Art,” is a free all-ages writing workshop on Sunday April 17, 2-4pm at the Lawrence Percolator. Please plan to attend the whole workshop to help create a circle of deep sharing and reflecting. Led by former poet laureate Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg and naturalist and writer Ken Lassman, participants will consider their own “internal and external weather” in relation to climate change by dwelling among the art exhibit as a key writing prompt. The writing workshop is listed as a Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1Qr1led

Hang12“Effecting Change”includes art made from repurposed materials by teens, coordinated by the Lawrence Art Center’s youth curatorial board Hang12. The public is invited to the exhibit’s Final Friday opening on March 25, 5-8pm, Watkins Museum of History, 1047 Massachusetts St. The exhibit runs for a month and is open Tuesday – Friday, 10am-4pm (and on Thursdays in April from 10am – 8pm). “Climate Change is an issue that impacts all of us. To bring awareness to this subject we asked artists to use repurposed materials within their artwork to take a stand on Climate Change and environmental issues.” Watkins website: http://bit.ly/1Rsh4X7

Eco Ambassadors “Haskell Wetlands Restoration Day” invites the public to join this Haskell student-led workday of seeding and planting to help restore the Haskell Wetlands, on Saturday April 16, 2016, 10am-2pm. Bring gloves and gardening/landscaping tools. Directions: Come straight on Massachusetts St. heading S., continue S. past Indian Health Service. Massachusetts St. turns into W. Perimeter Rd. so keep going and follow road around campus until you get to the intersection of W. Perimeter Rd. and Barker Ave. Dr. Then turn right onto Barker Ave. Dr. (you are going south), go straight and you will run right into the wetlands access gate. The workday is listed as a Facebook event: http://bit.ly/1ZtKmuh